First Look

Just when you thought it was safe to go outside with your hobby money, along comes TAC Scale Dynamics' first full kit - a 1/32 Mikoyan MiG-15bis. This kit was produced jointly by Replicast of Slovakia and TAC Scale Dynamics. If you read my previous review of Replicast's (CollectAire) 1/32 Aero L-39 Albatross, you knew that I was drooling when I opened that kit. I am mid-way though assembly and I will be sharing a full build-up review soon. If I was impressed with the L-39, I am in awe of this kit!

Unlike the average resin kits that we are all familiar with, the MiG-15 kit's fuselage halves are quite hollow and almost the thickness of an injected plastic kit in this scale. The wings are solid with a nice, deep main gear well featured. The heart of the interior revolves around a U-shaped piece that is the intake splitter. The inside of that splitter has beautiful detail molded in for the cockpit tub and nose gear well. Once assembled, the splitter assembly fits inside the fuselage halves and renders a very authentic representation of the read aircraft. The canopy is nicely vacuformed.

What sets this kit apart from the L-39 is the number of detail parts. The ejection seat is no less than eight pieces (two pieces for each seat in the L-39). The instrument panel is four parts, two photo-etched parts laminated with two acetate instrument faces.

The rest of the cockpit is equally intricate with resin parts. The detail is also present in the landing gear bays and on the struts themselves (which are white metal). The gear doors all feature intricate hinge and actuator detail as well. The kit also features positionable speed brakes.

Decals are provided for Soviet, North Korean, and Chinese MiG-15s. The Soviet and North Korean examples are bare metal, while the Chinese example is camouflaged. Loads of maintenance stencils are also provided.

This kit looks like it could be a National IPMS Contest Winner straight out of the box! At $179.99, this kit might intimidate some folks, but I can attest that this kit is worth every penny (and then some). My sincere thanks to Talal Chouman of TAC Scale Dynamics for this review example!

NOTE: As an unfortunate postscript for this review, TAC Scale Dynamics went out of business since this review was originally written.

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